The Fishing Coach

This month has been taken up with more visits to Longmoor Farm with various students. The venue never fails to produce lots of small tench and carp and has proved to be a real find. Many thanks to my mate Clive Williams who is a leading light in Taywood Angling Society for putting me on to it.

On 11th May I went up to Yorkshire to help out at the Pickering Game Fair. Graham Walker and his wife Anne extended their kind hospitality to me for the weekend and I had a great time and was made to feel really welcome. The weather forecast had been terrible and I was prepared for a two day soaking but the rain held off except for Friday night, until just after we had packed up on the Sunday. Derek North and I were suposed to be giving demonstrations on a tiny, fish free pond but most of the time it was full of spaniels and labradors doing gun dog trials. I had intended to give a demonstration of Wallace casting and lure fishing but can you imagine the result of me fishing a surface jerk bait with all those gun dogs about?As a dog lover myself I daren’t even think about it.

As you can see from the picture we were not exactly overworked, being sited well away from the main arena.

I had two what I call returners courses this month, these are run for anglers who fished when they were young and then often discovered girls, a career or had a familly. They try to return to the sport, often twenty or so years later only to find everything has changed. I try to reintroduce these anglers back to the sport by showing them that very little has really changed, just some of the tackle and the associated terminology. It is often just a matter of confidence - a thing that sometimes plays a greater part in our sport than is realised.

The pictures above show one such angler, Adam, who was able to catch a number of these roach from Lake one at Twynersh. It was a shame that a cold snap the night before had put the carp and tench down. The weather has been very changeable all month and so for the second course I abandoned my usual venue and the hope of bonus carp. I took Andrew to the match lake at Twynersh in the hope of some bream. After a period of reckless ground baiting with my favourite mix as we set up and then more careful feeding as he fished, he ended the day with fifteen bream to four pounds.

I have fished Marsh Farm three times but due to the changeable weather conditions I was unable to time my visits with the feeding times of the big crucian carp but I did catch some smaller ones and some tench.

My good mate Les, known here as Weller of the yard, has finally moved to Northumberland where he tells me there is very little coarse fishing and so he has sold me two of his match poles and his Boss box. Another steep learning curve for me and Les will have to learn to “chuck fluff”.

My move to the Kennet valley seems to be going ahead, my house is under offer and the offer we have made on a house in the village of Kingsclere has been accepted, I found this delightful village a few years ago whilst looking for a fishery close to Newbury for coaching with E2E and over the last couple of years I have revisited Frobury Farm quite a few times. This will place me within fifteen minutes drive of the Wasing Estate. Roll on!

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One of my previous students, Joe Perdoni, has asked the following question and I feel that it deseves more attention than a quick reply under the comments section.

Martin,
What is a good set up when ledger fishing for carp near a large patch of lily pads (line strength etc..) Should you always fish around the outside edge or (and excuse me if this is a bit of stupid question to ask) is their a set up you can you to cast right in amongst the lilies without getting snagged up?
Thanks
Joe

This will depend on the size of the carp you are expecting to hook but I would be reluctant to go below twelve pound main line, preferably fifteen and beware of these fine braided hook lengths as they are not as abrasion resistant as the manufacturers would have us believe.

I would advise that you tackle this type of swim with a heavy float rod so that as soon as the bite develops you are in contact with the fish and can begin steering the fish out of the lilly patch, straightaway, before it realises it is hooked. This is particularly effective at short ranges where you can lift the fish’s head to stop it diving into the roots.

The roots of a lilly patch are your main problem, the lilly pads and stalks are quite fragile and will not give you much trouble on fifteen pound line but deep underneath them are the rhizomes which link bunches of pads and these can be as thick as your arm. If a decent carp gets your line under one of these then you will be lucky to get it out.

If you must leger then use a line clip on the rod to stop the fish taking line and fish with the line very tight, even with the rod tip bent, but sit close to your rod or you will lose it. Fish the out skirts of the patch when possible and try to draw the fish out by loose feeding or groundbait prior to fishing.

If the fish will not leave the sanctuary of the lillies at any cost then putting your lead and baited hook into a pva bag will prevent snagging the pads on the cast but I would resort to the following set up.

Pick a patch of lillies less than two rod lenghts from the bank adjacent to plenty of bankside cover to conceal your presence. Prior to fishing, carefully remove a pad or two just in from the edge of the patch, to give a hole for your float to sit in and to enable your baited hook to get to the bottom, then prebait for a couple of days with bait samples.

The rod I would use is a Harrison “Stepped up, Stepped up” float rod which will handle twelve pound line comfotably and is twelve feet long with a through action, coupled with a robust centrepin loaded with twelve pound line. Use a strong forged hook no smaller than size six under a small pole float, fix enough weight to sink it six inches from the hook and set the float so that the tip is just under the surface. When and only when, the float rises above the surface, strike quickly(ignore any dips or sideways movement of the float) and hold. .Once hooked try to lift the fish whilst steering it out of the lillies. The centrepin will allow you, if you are brave enough, to take a couple of turns of line from the fish while you are lifting it and this will sometimes make the difference.

This fish was taken from a frightfully snaggy swim in the corner of Split Lakes on the Cemex complex at Yateley using similar tactics, it weighed twenty one pounds.

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On Wednesday I took a young lad from Slough back to Longmoor Farm with the promise to try and catch him some bigger carp. I decided to try fishing up in the water instead of on the bottom and fed quite heavilly and often with maggot and low oil carp pellets. We started with a little revision on the short, elasticated pole and he was soon playing a three pound carp which had taken his bait on the drop.

He continued to catch smaller carp and lots of tench and because of the way I was feeding most of them were caught up in the water, taking the bait on the drop. We then switched to rod and line, a waggler rod, four pound main line and three pound hook length. The result was the same but a different experience for him and a slightly better carp.

This was a pretty Common Carp at five pounds and his biggest fish of the day.

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Last week in between coaching sessions I decided that I needed some tench fishing away from my usual coaching haunts. I chose to visit Bury Hill Fisheries and fish the main lake as a result of an email from Bury Hill full of glowing reports of feeding tench. The first of May found me on the long bank of the old lake just after seven thirty armed with two light carp rods and a steeped up float rod, intending to fish any combination in pairs. The day ticket for two rods was £17, which I thought a little steep but the old lake is a very pleasant environment in which to fish and I have had some nice tench in the past.

One of the legering rods was set up with a semi fixed heavy open ended feeder with a short hook length, bolt rig style and the bait was a hair rigged 10mm. Source boilie from Dynamite Baits on a size 10 hook. The feeder was filled with the same small boilies and ground bait. The second leger rod had a much lighter open ended feeder on a paternoster link, with a three feet hook length and a size fourteen hook. This rig was fished in conjunction with maggots.

I fished the float rod with a waggler and a bunch of maggots on the bottom about two rod lengths out next to some lillies. I put a bed of groundbait next to the lillies first thing, intending to leave the float fishing for later and filled the feeder on the first rod with boilies and groundbait. I made eight or ten casts with this rod to the tip of a patch of lillies about twenty five yards away, filling the feeder each time, to put down a bed of bait.

The groundbait was a mix of two parts Expo to one part Marine Pellet Groundbait and two parts brown crumb. Hemp, pellets, sweetcorn and dead maggots were added to the mix.

I cast out the first rod with the semi fixed rig and as I was filling the lighter feeder on the other rod the bobbin shot to the first ring and I was playing a bream about two pounds with the boilie, still on its hair hanging from the side of it’s mouth. As bream were not my target I decided to rest this side of the swim and try the maggot feeded on the other side. No bites were forthcoming here, so I decided to float fish.

Bream nearly every cast both on the float and on the legered boiles, I must have had twenty five up to about four pounds but no tench. I was able to unhook most of them in the water from the edge of the fishing platform to cause them the least possible stress and avoid coating myself, my landing net and unhooking mat in bream slime. I have never been a fan of stillwater bream but I suppose it is better than blanking!

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